August 14, 2007

Some Entertainment Weekly editors are saying it's Seth Green, who seems to think it might be Weird Al. But that's because EW is interviewing Seth Green, and Seth Green just got done interviewing Weird Al. Nevertheless, it's a great -- or good enough! -- question to justify trying to come up with a list and then narrow it down for a vote. You're not limited to actors and musicians, and remember the key word is prototype. Who originally unleashed the possibility that we could see the geek as sexy? I think that means going back a long, long way. But keep the time frame within reason -- at least within the era of photography. We don't need to hear about what Alcibiades said about Socrates in "The Symposium." And frankly, it would be geeky to bring that up. Not even geeky. Nerdy.

Paddy O: I was going to write some suggestions, and the first one I thought of was Buster Keaton and, second, Harold Lloyd, which I think is a better answer. He was in college a lot in his films, I think.

Snake: Elvis Costello came to mind for me too. But if you say Elvis Costello, you have to revert to his prototype: Buddy Holly. And for the 60s version: Freddie of Freddie and the Dreamers.

I'm sure Woody Allen would love it if we would all cite him, but he has never, ever been sexy. He used to be funny, but even that's gone.

The first sexy geek I can recall in modern cinema would be Jeff Goldblum, who first really got noticed as The Fly, but whose turn as the the chaos-theory loving mathematician in Jurassic Park set him up for a bunch of roles in a similar vein. But the '80s are probably too late to make him a true prototype.

The Bill Gates story only refered to his precious bodily fluids, not the man himself.

What was the first portrayal of computer nerds specifically in movies? I remember Jim and Malvin from Wargames. " I can't believe it, Jim. That girl's standing over there listening and you're telling him about our back doors? " There must have been something before that, though.

But I don't think Broderick was really a geek, just a guy who broke into computers. The geekiness implies a certain lack of the social graces, and Lightman was doing some social engineering. The challenge is to combine both the lack of social grace with the sexy.

Jim and Malvin are geeks. I always liked Jim's burned-out geek, and I think Ally Sheedy was digging him when Lightman surprised him under the desk. Admit it, the smiley face shirt is a chick magnet.

Back in the mid 80's, I had long curly black hair and a mustache. One night, as a friend of mine and I walked into T.A. Verns (a Milwaukee rock-oriented night club), a drunk woman (not uncommon at T.A. Verns) pointed at me and said to her friend, "Oh my God, it's Wierd Al!"

Not missing a beat, my friend stepped between me and the two women, and in a hushed tone told them, "No, no, no. You are mistaken. This is not Mr. Yankovic," as he shuffled the two women past the bouncer, who was a friend.

The DJ that night was also a friend, and we passed the story on to him. Being the twisted sort that he was, he played a very disproportionate number of Wierd Al tunes, which just drove those two girls crazy as they tried to convince other people not quite as drunk as them that I was, in fact, Wierd Al.

The makers of "Pirates of Silicon Valley" apparently thought that Steve Jobs was a sexy geek. They promoted a popular, but essentially untrue, version of the story about Jobs and his entourage (including Steve Wozniak, who didn't participate in this particular excursion) going to Xerox PARC to see one of their Smalltalk-running workstations and, essentially, charming Dr. Adele Goldberg into giving away the farm. About the only part they got right is that Dr. Goldberg is indeed auburn-haired.

The essential parts of geekiness are 1) a certain obliviousness to social graces--it's not that they set out to violate them in a bad-boy way, but that such things don't come up on their radar screen. 2) Intense interest in some complex and esoteric subject related to technology. It is similar to the absent-minded professor stereotype, but the AMP could be focused on the humanities, and he cleans up a bit better.

Jobs is keenly aware of the dynamics of social interactions, and in fact ruthlessly exploits his knowledge of this topic to get his way. He's frequently bullying, flattering, exploits other's need for his approval, and does all sorts of other social egineering that a real geek would not be conversant with. This is why Ferris Bueller is not a geek--he's too glib and able to talk his way out of a situation. Anyway, the "type" of Jobs is more like the Silicon Valley sharpster manager/CEO/Venture capitalist than a geek.